Our guest today, Adrian James, joins the podcast to talk about innovation in the chronic care management space for the second episode in our series on this topic. Adrian is Co-Founder and President of Omada Health, a digital behavioral medicine company using behavior science to help people change their habits, improve their health, and reduce their risk of chronic disease.

Prior to co-founding Omada Health, Adrian led the medical products division of IDEO’s health practice where he focused on business development and client relationships, ranging from industry startups to Fortune 500 healthcare companies. Adrian also holds a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

In this episode, Chuck and Adrian discuss:

Adrian’s background, career at IDEO, and what led him to start Omada Health

How the Omada Health platform works and how the company approaches taking a process that was typically done in person and delivering it digitally, while ensuring compliance and success

The types of outcomes Omada has been able to achieve to date

The importance of users on the Omada platform to be part of the communities within the platform and the importance of interpersonal touchpoints

How Omada takes a user-centered design approach to make the product “sticky” and to keep people coming back to it

What it was like raising the first money for the company and what was going on in the early stages of development

How Omada plans to deploy the $50M recently raised in the company’s Series C round

Adrian talks about Omada’s recently launched randomized trial of digital diabetes care in partnership with the University of Nebraska Medical Center to further gauge the efficacy of its program, which aims to keep those at risk for diabetes from developing the disease

"The PREDICTS trial is the next step in that evolution—it will track a range of healthcare and other outcomes, while establishing the highest level of clinical evidence for the effectiveness of a digitally-delivered intensive behavioral counseling program."

Adrian’s advice to early entrepreneurs trying to innovate in the digital health space and what he thinks are key things to strive for or be on the lookout for